WAS CLOUGHIE GUILTY OF A HATE CRIME? Ian Hart chats with Nic Outterside

Ian Hart interviews Author Nic Outterside on Harty’s One2One. Legendary manager Brian Clough’s treatment of Britain’s first openly Gay footballer and ex Albion striker Justin Fashanu is being questioned in a new book, Wet Socks and Dry Bones written by author and long time Brighton fan Nic Outterside. Speaking on Harty’s One to One Show on Latest TV Outterside revealed that Clough, who had previously managed Brighton from 1973-74, asked Fashanu in front of the entire Nottingham Forest squad in 1982, when he was manager and Fashanu was a player respectively, if he was Gay? He then went on to list a number of local gay pubs that the player had allegedly frequented. Outterside told Harty, “Whilst it was a different time back then to ask such a blatant question in a football club environment was a clear case of homophobia” After a serious loss of form, Clough later banned Fashanu from training, and had the player, who had previously won BBC TV’s Goal of the Season just two years before, removed from the Forest training ground by local Police in October 1982 after the player tried to defy the ban. Fashanu joined Forest’s neighbours Notts County in Dec 1982 before signing for the Albion in the summer of 1985. He initially retired through injury in July 1986 but made a series of ultimately abortive comebacks with 15 different football clubs in Britain, the US and Canada, and was once reported to be engaged to Coronation Street actress Julie Goodyear. Fashanu, formerly a Dr Barnardo’s boy with his younger brother John who was also a footballer, eventually came out in a tabloid exclusive in 1990, although he later admitted a large part of the content was fabricated for financial gain, later committed suicide in East London in 1998 after returning to this country from the US after an incident in Maryland involving the Police. Wet Socks and Dry Bones, Ghosts of The Goldstone Ground is published by Time is an Ocean Publications.